What Do Founding Era Sources Reveal About the Second Amendment?

I spent last week vacationing in Florida. One of the things I really enjoy about getting away from the daily routine is the opportunity to catch up on reading. So, while lounging on the beach, I dug into founding era sources surrounding the proposal and ratification of the Second Amendment. Here are some things that were very clear.
1. There is zero evidence that the founders contemplated the Second Amendment applying to the states.

2. The maintenance and independence of the state militia was intimately connected with the Second Amendment.

3. The militia was not a select group of people. It was the whole people of a state (able-bodied males – but generally described as people.)

4. The militia was considered a check on government power. This was the driving force behind the Second Amendment. The fear was that Congress could disarm the people (the militia) and establish a standing army in its stead. But this idea flowed from a more general right of self-defense. An individual right to defend oneself it seems was pretty much a given. I didn’t find any evidence that the idea of government disarming people for their “own protection” was even contemplated.

5. The biggest debate surrounding the Second Amendment when it was proposed was a provision to exempt those who objected to taking up arms on religious ground from militia service. This was ultimately dropped. Reading between the lines, you realize that it was pretty much a requirement that able-bodied males keep and bear arms.

6. The reason the Second Amendment focuses on the militia is because that was the only avenue the founders contemplated the federal government using to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. There is no delegated power for the federal government to regulate guns for “safety” purposes.

2 thoughts on “What Do Founding Era Sources Reveal About the Second Amendment?”

The Second Amendment bound only the central government until the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which facially incorporated it to bind the states in one fell swoop. “Selective incorporation” is a counterfeit construct, manufactured for political reasons by the SCOTUS.

To imagine that only the central government is constrained from abridging fundamental rights (ALL of them) is to live in a fantasy land.

Incorporation of the Bill of Rights was not the intent of the 14th Amendment. The notion that the 14th bound the states to the Bill of Right was an invention of the Supreme Court some 60 years after ratification of the 14th. The privileges and immunities protected by the 14th were understood to be specifically linked to Civil Rights Act of 1866. They included the right to enter into contracts, own property, inherit property, travel freely and access to the courts. The words of those advocating for passage of the 14th bear this out. For instance, West Virginia Rep. George Latham said, “The civil rights bill, which is now a law…covers exactly the same ground as the amendment.” Howard Jay Graham, an advocate of an abolitionist reading of the amendment said, “Virtually every speech in the debates on the amendment – Republican and Democrat alike – said or agreed that the amendment was designed to embody or incorporate the Civil Rights Act.”

To imagine that it is a good idea to make the federal government the “liberty enforcement squad,” is living in fantasy land.